In search for one and only game that has ever come close to the looks of real-life, GT series would probably be the winner, and that's not specified to an genre of driving games.
But, to leave beside the texture mapping, bit mapping and pixel to vertex shading of beast-graphic-cards driven PC FPS's, GT series is still the overall winner in many fields that should complete the quest of "closest-to-real-life game".
Photorealistic ("Photorealistic Beaver", for all of those who watched that special episode of Cow and Chicken) looks is one part of overallness that is brought to players with every next installment of the GT games.
Even from the starts of the series, none of the games eveer manage to create such a "real-life" feeling, for both graphics (Photorealistic Beaver), sounds and last but certanlly not least - the feeling of the game.
In the fields where Ghost Recon titles on PC's delivered unmatchable graphics linked with ultra-relism of combat - just to state one of the games that are trying to create a real-life enviroment - GT series managed to deliver great level of realism that should always be in games, acessible to both hard-core experinced player and to an total amateur.
Of course, replay was always the peak of fame of GT series - even if graphic during the race was no so important, the sttuning level of photorealism delivered by replay always amased from the very start.
So, for the true photorealistic game we should definatlly wait for the next console (as Yamauchi stated in conversation I had with him, "the biggest improvement in GT game on PlayStation 3, or whatever the new console will be called, will be in terms of graphic. With that game, tendency to compare visuals of the game with real-life will be totally neutralised."), and I think the intro sequence of GT Concept game displays the way that GT5 will probablly look. Certanlly, that will still not be "Photorealistic Beaver", but if they ever manage to create a GT game that will have an real 3D incorporated (and to give us a pair of decent 3D glasses to play it), then I guess the certain levels of photoralism shuld be matched.
Having a true 3D would do a lot for the game, but in the present time, even the RalliSport Challenge for Xbox can't match the visuals of GT Concept - maybe in in-game graphic, but not in terms of replay, car modelling, constraning of real proportions, distant object handling and in-space behaviour.
And as for GT4 - if there is one photorealistic game that will come in nearby future - GT4 will be the one.
And for Photorealistic Beaver game, we should wait some more time.
(I don't think so!)
